An inside look at 12 recruiting tools used by modern HR teams

The Hire Team

Published Mar 5, 2019

Modern HR teams must constantly be innovating to have an edge in a
highly
competitive job market. Your own recruiting team might be
considering new approaches to improve your hiring processes, like branching out to
a new job board, trying new ways to reach passive candidates, or
implementing tactics for re-engaging lost
candidates.

To help make time for these more nuanced hiring tasks, a number of
new recruiting tools have emerged to help solve common hiring
challenges, from eliminating bias in job
descriptions to interviewing multiple candidates in a short
period of time. These recruiting tools can help you identify and
resolve inefficiencies in your recruiting process so you can focus
on making the perfect hire.

Why do HR teams need more recruiting tools?

Before you start researching tools to add to your recruiting
process, it’s important to prioritize the tools that will cover your
basic hiring needs first. An ATS (applicant tracking
system) is a solid baseline tool that any team that hires
regularly can benefit from. It streamlines the administrative tasks
that come with hiring, and ensures all information stays in a
centralized database. This lets you focus on getting to know your
candidates, rather than on tasks like filling in
spreadsheets, keeping track of to-do lists, or searching through
emails to find information.

Once you have a solid ATS in place, you can begin looking for
additional tools that compliment, or even integrate with, your
chosen ATS. These tools can help take your hiring to the next level,
by layering on additional functionality such as sourcing, improving
the candidate experience, or hiring a more representative team.

By integrating an ATS with other recruiting tools, you can make your
life easier and improve your hiring at the same time. The combined
power can help you deliver a better experience for job seekers from
the moment they click “apply.”

12 recruiting tools used by modern HR teams

To help you choose recruitment tools that will make a positive
impact on your business, we've handpicked 12 tools that modern HR
teams are using to solve real hiring challenges. These tools can be
used individually or in combination with your ATS.

We'll explain how each is used to recruit stronger candidates faster
or with less administrative overhead. Then, we'll share how some of
the strongest HR departments have used several of them to improve
their own hiring processes.

Tool #2: Stay in touch with your candidates using Mya

Mya asks candidates questions immediately after
they've applied for an open role and begins moving qualified
candidates through the hiring process. The chatbot can inquire about
experience, current positions, and knowledge about specific topics
or skills. It can also schedule meetings between qualified
candidates and your hiring managers, giving you more time to focus
on your interviews instead of pre-screening hundreds of applicants.

One of Mya's greatest benefits is that it prevents candidates from
falling into a “recruiting black hole.” As soon as someone applies
for a role, they're able to discuss their application with Mya.
After a quick chat, they'll find out if they're proceeding
to an interview with your HR team, so candidates aren't waiting days
for an automated rejection email.

The chatbot can also help your team with additional administrative
tasks right from its interface, including:

Administering skill tests

Giving updates on applications

Messaging candidates about hiring decisions

Improve the quality of your applicants with AI

This second group of recruitment tools also uses artificial
intelligence—but for a different purpose. In this case, AI is
utilized to improve the quality of your candidates.

This doesn't just mean people with stronger skills: it also means a
more representative selection of candidates. With these tools, you
can work to reduce hiring
bias, improve
diversity, and ultimately create stronger teams.

Tool #3: Quickly screen your applicants with Ideal

Ideal is recruiting software that utilizes AI to
pre-screen candidate profiles and resumes. The software evaluates
applicants for your open roles using criteria you've established,
then assigns each candidate a letter grade based on their fit.
Candidates with an A are the most qualified, while those with a B
are close, and so on.

Using Ideal allows your HR team to automatically screen a high
volume of applications without missing any potentially qualified
candidates. It also integrates with a large number of ATS', so the
value of Ideal is felt almost immediately.

Within just four months, Indigo Books & Music experienced a 71% reduction in cost per
hire once they began using Ideal as part of their talent
acquisition process. Plus, their recruiters increased their
efficiency by over 300% thanks to the elimination of manual resume
reviews.

Tool #4: Use Textio to create stronger job descriptions

Textio
uses AI to evaluate your job descriptions before you publish
them. The tool scores your description from 0 to 100 (with 100 being
the best possible score), then identifies and explains opportunities
for improvement, including:

Language that can bring in more qualified applicants

Changes in tone that may encourage more female applicants

Phrases that can attract underrepresented candidates

Textio works in a variety of locations: your HR team can use
Textio's web interface to evaluate copy-pasted job descriptions, or
they can add on a convenient browser extension to enable evaluations
in Gmail or on LinkedIn.

Tool #5: Remove gendered words from job ads using a Gender Decoder

This simple Gender Decoder
tool by Kat Matfield gives you the ability to quickly
double-check your job descriptions for gendered words using any
browser before you post it to your careers site. Simply paste your
text in the box on the Gender Decoder website, click the “check this
ad” button, and you'll receive a list of any masculine- or
feminine-coded words you can edit before your job posting goes live.

Recruit qualified candidates from internal referrals

Your team members often know talented people who may be looking for
roles similar to those you're looking to fill. Because current
employees have typically worked with a wide variety of talent in the
past, the best candidates for open positions often come via referrals from
your team.

Standardizing the referral process—and implementing rewards for
making referrals—benefits both your HR team and your employees.
These tools can help you fill open roles with qualified candidates
even faster.

What makes Teamable stand out from other referral tools is its
built-in reward system. Your HR team can assign a cash bonus to any
open role and reward it to employees who successfully refer a new
hire. Employees can also send an HR-approved email to their contacts
about job openings or pass a friend's contact information directly
along to a recruiter.

Tool #7: Get more internal referrals with RolePoint

RolePoint's talent acquisition tool
gives employees who refer candidates from previous jobs or their
social networks an inside look at their progress. The tool has
detailed employee-facing analytics, so the referring employees—not
just your HR team—can see:

Who they've referred

Which jobs they've referred candidates to

How many times their unique links have been clicked

How many total referrals they've made

How many referrals have resulted in a hire

Additionally, when connected with your ATS, RolePoint can keep your
employees updated on the status of their referrals, including which
candidates have been reviewed by HR, scheduled interviews, or
received offers.

National full-service wireless provider U.S. Cellular integrated
RolePoint directly with their ATS, so their employees could search open jobs
for potential referral opportunities. After adopting the
tool in mid-2017, the HR team saw their hires from referrals
increase from 10% to 18.5% within the first 90 days. By the end of
the year, one out of every five hires was an employee referral.

Test candidates' skills quickly

Some roles require you to verify a candidate's knowledge or hands-on
experience. Testing tools can help you not only confirm the
information on their resume, but also place candidates in a role
where they're most likely to find success.

Tool #8: Administer over 1,000 tests via Interview Mocha

If your HR team needs to test a candidate's skills, Interview Mocha probably has you
covered. This website has over 1,000 ready-made tests spanning a
wide variety of industries, programming languages, software, and
aptitudes, including:

Language proficiency

Online marketing skills

Sales tools

Accounting

Database administration

You can also add your own questions to tests or create a custom test
from scratch with the help of Interview Mocha's support team.

By testing a candidate's strengths during the recruiting process,
your team can determine where they fit best at your
organization—even if it's not at the exact role they applied for.
Saving the test results in your ATS will allow you to revisit
high-scoring candidates for future openings and potentially reach
out for a new interview with a tool like Mya.

Tool #9: Test development skills with HackerRank

If your HR team regularly hires developers, HackerRank is an ideal choice for
testing their knowledge and experience. The platform offers off-site
coding challenges that can be sent to candidates, as well as to CodePair,
their platform that enables live interviewing and real-time
problem-solving.

Development teams helping with the interviewing process can use
HackerRank's 1,500 questions about more than 35 programming
languages or create their own tests from scratch. They can also
review test results for quality or potential plagiarism.

Booking.com used HackerRank when it wanted to reliably double
the size of its development teams. The team set a baseline score
for their coding challenges, and each candidate who met or exceeded
that score on HackerRank was invited to a face-to-face interview.
This drastically reduced the amount of time needed to pre-screen
candidates via traditional programming tests, like whiteboard
demonstrations.

Tool #10: Use Weirdly to look for matching values

Weirdly isn't a traditional skill testing tool;
instead, it asks applicants a series of questions to determine how
well their values, objectives, and goals match those of an open
role. By asking candidates about what matters most to them—for
example, working in a team or achieving goals alone—you can get a
much better idea of their work style before you even
meet.

One caveat: hiring for
culture fit can be smart, but it's not the only thing your HR
team should look for. You shouldn’t use “culture fit” as a way to
hire candidates with the exact same values and opinions as you, as
this may not help you improve diversity in meaningful ways. Tools
like Weirdly are best when they're used to match candidates with the
requirements and demands of open roles, just as Countdown
described here.

Schedule interviews without the back-and-forth

This final group of tools can help your HR team schedule interviews
with candidates more easily. They help eliminate the confusion that
comes with new candidates using different calendar tools, or remote
workers being located in multiple time zones.

Your ATS should offer interview scheduling capabilities, but these
additional options can add an extra layer of sophistication to the
process to improve your efficiency and time management.

Tool #11: Schedule interviews with My Ally's AI assistant

Thanks to Alex's natural language processing, candidates often don't
realize they're talking to a smart assistant. Also, Alex can use
text messages, email, or online chat—whichever medium is fastest and
most convenient for your candidates.

After Outcome Health added My Ally's smart assistant to their lineup
of recruiting tools, they were able to move candidates through the
pipeline 300% faster and hire 200% more candidates each week.
They were also able to integrate Alex directly into their ATS,
saving even more time for recruiters and hiring managers, and
improving the candidate experience.

Sends both you and the candidate a confirmation email, plus a link to reschedule if necessary

The tool is especially useful for hiring teams recruiting across
multiple time zones. Since Calendly automatically shows your
availability in a candidate's local time zone, there's no confusion
about when a scheduled meeting is actually taking place.

Use these tools to improve your recruitment processes

Your ATS is the backbone of your hiring process. Strengthen your
recruitment process by adding other recruiting tools that easily
integrate with it. Not only will it make your ATS more powerful, but
it will help you more effectively recruit better candidates.

Give one of these 12 proven recruiting tools a try to take your
hiring to the next level.

About Hire by Google

Hire is a recruiting app by Google that uses AI to make the hiring process faster and simpler. Because it is designed specifically for G Suite users, with Gmail, Google Calendar and other G Suite integrations, Hire streamlines administrative tasks so that your team can hire the best people, faster.